Brentwood | Website Meeting Notes 

(April 22, 2026\) 

## **Meeting Purpose**

To scope the website migration from a custom CMS to WordPress.

## **Key Takeaways**

* **Recommended:** Migrate the site to WordPress to escape the current custom Laravel CMS, which is unmaintainable and prevents marketing innovation.  
* **Strategy:** Launch by mid-July to avoid disrupting the new enrollment ad cycle. Wordpress will use simplified user groups and hard-code the static timetable.  
* **Priority:** Overhaul tracking to connect ad campaigns to FinalSite applications. This requires embedding FinalSite forms directly in WordPress to capture user journey data.  
* **Assets:** Preserve the 700+ student blogs via script migration and improve their SEO performance, as they are a key marketing asset.

## **Summary**

### **Problem: Unmaintainable Custom CMS**

* The current Laravel CMS is unmaintainable, preventing marketing innovation and creating a single point of failure.  
* **User Permissions:** The system has 118 individual permissions, a complex structure that is difficult to manage.  
  * Proposed Solution: Simplify to \~8 user groups (e.g., Marketing, Teachers) to streamline management.  
  * Rationale: Low risk of users editing others' pages; the main admissions pages will be locked down.  
* Teacher Bios: The current system's simple bio-update interface is highly effective and should be replicated.

**Solution: WordPress Migration**

* **Timeline:** Launch Wordpress site by mid-July to avoid disrupting the new enrollment ad cycle.  
* **Scope:**  
  * Move the entire site over to Wordpress. Keeping current design and structure as much as possible.  
  * Timetable: Hard-code the static timetable. This saves development time, as the schedule is a fixed sales differentiator.  
  * Student Blogs: Migrate all 700+ blogs via script.  
    * Action: Create a video tutorial for the photojournalism teacher to ensure a smooth transition.  
  * **Live Streams:** The new Huddle platform handles 90% of all sports streams. The remaining 10% (e.g., graduation) are YouTube embeds managed by IT and will be unaffected.  
  * **Volleyball Stats:** Deprecate the Volleyball.brentwood.ca app. It is likely an unused legacy project from the original developer. Need to confirm no one is using it.

### **Priority: Marketing & Tracking Overhaul**

* **Goal:** Connect ad campaigns to FinalSite applications to track the full user journey.  
* **Challenge:** FinalSite is a competitor and does not offer a direct WordPress integration.  
* **Potential Solution:**  
  * Embed FinalSite forms directly in WordPress to capture user data.  
  * Use a custom plugin to capture user journey data (pages visited, sources) in a first-party cookie.  
  * Pass this data to FinalSite upon form submission, enabling end-to-end tracking.

### **Future Opportunities**

* **SEO:** Implement Yoast SEO Premium for schema markup and AI-powered optimization.  
* **Image Optimization:** Use a plugin to auto-resize and compress images on upload, solving a past issue where a broken compression tool caused images to fail loading.  
* **Footer Images:** Add page-specific footer images enhancement.  
* **School Store:** A school store (e.g., via WooCommerce) is a viable future project.

## **Next Steps**

* **Rian & Tracy:** Prepare a proposal with a base migration cost and a la carte options for tracking, SEO, and other enhancements.  
* **Erin:** Provide Rian with a list of outstanding IT tickets and pain points to inform the proposal.